Friday, January 30, 2009

Beanbag Tutorial

These beanbags are made from felt or fleece--your choice--as both materials do not fray when cut & it makes for a quick project! The other materials you'll need are: fabric, scissors, marker, ruler, contrasting thread, a sewing machine &...

...popcorn. Ok, so mine are not TECHNICALLY "bean" bags. But use what you have: beans, small pasta, rice, etc.

You can make whatever size you want. Mine are made by cutting 2 four-inch square pieces of felt/fleece.

Take one piece of felt/fleece & draw the design that will be the cut-out where the fabric will show through. As you can see, mistakes are perfectly fine. This will be on the inside of the beanbag, so it won't even show.

Cut out your design.

Choose a piece of fabric & cut it smaller than the square, but large enough to cover the cut-out design. Make sure you lay it on top of the felt with the right side facing through the design.

Sew the fabric to the felt/fleece. I stitched as close to the edge as I could.

I actually stitched around a few times in a random haphazard way. It started out as a mistake, & then I realized I liked it.

Next, sandwich your 2nd piece of felt/fleece to the back of the cut-out felt/fleece. Stitch around 3 sides, leaving about 1/4" seam allowance.

Fill your beanbag with the beans. Or popcorn. Or the lentils that have been sitting in the back of your pantry for 2 years. I used about 1/3 CUP. The tiny people like to help with this part. And just have your broom handy.

Sew up the last side & trim up any uneven edges. Or leave the edges all nifty & askew. It's up to you.

One beanbag down! That took less than 10 minutes to make.I made up the star beanbags with the Kindergarten girls last night in my Daisies group at church. I did the hard part first & they helped me sew the edges & fill it with beans. Look, I even made a personalized one! My nephew will love it!

The dark grey & purple beanbags in the middle row were both made using felt. The others are fleece.

My girls & their sparkly shoes. I gotta get me some.

My girls & I tested the beanbags out.

Yep. They work.

I was thinking that you could even do the cut-outs on both sides. What about making the beanbags to spell out a word or someone's name? What about scented beanbags, adding a bit of lavender (or etc.) to your beans? And, of course, you could embellish the beanbag heck out of 'em too!

Next on my list of things to do is to find silly fun stuff to do WITH the beanbags!

I was thinking doing some A, B, C ones for a baby gift. Maybe making them bigger for babies and possibly big enough to stack??? I have been thinking about doing this lately, so thanks for the tut...you know I always love them! ~Kara

Ps. I got my cute little package yesterday..I will blog about it soon;o)

Hi Wendy,I sewed the cut-out design onto the felt & then the girls helped me push the pedal to the sewing metal to stitch up the first 3 sides. (They'd push it down & I'd tell them when to stop.) They filled 'em up with beans & then helped me sew the last opening closed. (If they wanted, they could carefully help me guide the fabric through while the needle stitched everything up.)We had played a beanbag game earlier in class--where the girls tossed the bag in circle saying one word of the memory verse--& I then I surprised them by telling them that we'd be making our own beanbags.

Thank you so much - after my first sewing lesson, I was looking for something simple to make and these were fantastic. I'm so proud of myself - grin grin- honestly, check them out.....http://ellaandizzy.blogspot.com/

I really love this idea. I am going to make some for a community group I am part of for kids games at events - letters can spell out the name of the group :-) Just so happened I picked up a remnant of purple fleece last week AND I have a massive bag of out of date split peas for filling.